Arizona weekly enterprise., 1887-06-18
ARIZONA WEEKLY ENTERPRISE.
NICE, JUNE IS, 1887
AN HISTORICAL MODEL.
A Steam Engine Built in 1909 Still in Pei
 feet Running Order.

A Steam Engine Built in 1909 Stin in Per-
 feet Running Order.
 Retained in perfect running order in the United States Steamboat Inspectors office in this city is an oscillating en- zine constructed in 1909 by Daniel French. It is only of model size and is probably the first engine of the kind ever constructed. Its description is simple. Havingits piston-rod attached directly to the crank-pin, as the crank revolves the cylinder oscillates upon trunnions, one on each side of it, through which the steam enters and leaves the steam-chest. The valves are within the steam-chest, oscillating with the cylinder. It is perhaps as sat isfactory an engine of this class as has ever been built, for it is well known that the mechanism actuating the valves in oscillating steam engines has seldom proved perfectly satisfactory in it's operation.
 The inventor, whose son carried on q ship-yard for years at Jeffersonville and was well known to many of the older citizens of the city, was eontemporane- ous with Robert Fulton, who built a steamboat on the Seine in 1903 with Chancellor Livingston, and who, in 1906, with Livingston, had boat butt on the Hudson in which he placed ma chinery claimed to have been made by Boulton & Watt in England.
 Daniel French had litigation with Fulton about this steamboat, claiming that the latter had appropriated his in- vention, but Fulton WIS backed by Liv- ingston's influence and capital, and, though the case was before the courts for many years in one form or another, French was finally defeated. Although the oscillating engine on exhibition in the Steamboat Inspector office was not built till 1909, it was by no means the first attempt French had made to invent an engine applicable for steam naviga- ton. He had been known as an inven- tor for a quarter of a century before, and his numerous inventions of different kinds had given him an extensive and esteemed reputation. Those who knew him were wont to say that he was half century ahead of the time in which he lived.
 It is not improbable that Fulton was familiar with French's experiments with steam. It is an historical fact that in connection with his profession as an engineer he had passed years in the scientific experiments the result oi which forever identified his name with steamboat navigation. It is not to be doubted, therefore, that he was ac- quainted with the efforts of every expert menter of the power of steam in this direction, from the time that Blanco de Garay is supposed to have actually ap- piled steam to the propulsion of ship at Barcelona, in the year 1543, up to the time when, in 1763, William Henry, of Chester County, Pennsylvania, tried his model steamboat on the Conestoga river. Fulton witnessed that expert nlent, and it is matter of record that he was familiar with the work of the numerous contemporary inventors, in America, and had visited England, where he found others at work on the same problem. But with this invention as with all others, though the claimants may be numerous, the credit attaches tc the one most successful in bringing il before the public. Courier. Journal.